From the Bloomberg wire:
Bain Capital LLC, the buyout firm whose managing director owns a stake in basketball's Boston Celtics, increased its bid for the National Hockey League by at least $500 million to more than $4 billion, people familiar with the proposal said.Bain and Game Plan LLC, a Boston-based firm that arranges the sale of professional sports teams, in March made a $3.5 billion offer for the league, which still hasn't resolved a labor dispute with players that forced it to cancel its season. The new offer, which topped $4 billion, was made yesterday, said the people, who asked not to be identified.
``We haven't given up, that's for sure,'' Bob Caporale, Game Plan's chairman, said in a telephone interview. He declined to confirm that a revised offer was submitted to the league.
Back in March, I said I thought that the Bain story was just another negotiating tactic in Gary Bettman's bag of tricks, and it may still turn out to be that way. Then again, it's been three months, and these guys are still hanging around -- which lends some credence to Chris Lynch's view that Bain is simply tryng to peel off a majority of the owners in a hostile takeover of the NHL.
For more from Lynch, click here.
Interestingly enough, it was only a few days ago that Strategy Today, a blog run by a group of business students at the University of Chicago, wrote a detailed analysis of just how advantageous a Bain takeover of the NHL could be:
While the NHL
